Bobby Jindal Gives A Lesson In Education Reform

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Not long ago, I warned you that the real sleight-of-hand by which the Republican party is going to try and fool you that it no longer is a carnival of fruitcakes was going to come on the issue of education "reform" and not on immigration. The problem with the latter, of course, is that there are so many people in The Base who went themselves and hide under the bed at the sight of a brown person that any change in the party's position on immigration is going to be a long pull up a dirt road. (Rick Perry's campaign died on the issue of in-state tuition for the children of undocumented workers.) But education "reform," through which Republicans can pretend to care about poor children and black children, thereby dropping a "reasonable" veil over their retrograde ideas on poverty and race, is an easier haul. Even some Democratic politicians have signed on to some of the ideas of the education "reform" grifters, including some people at Brookings. So there's some lovely "bipartisan" cover that will make the Beltway hearts go pitty-pat.

Yesterday, Louisiana Governor "Bobby" Jindal dropped by the putative liberal Brookings Institute and showed how very easily this can be done. Jindal's had a tough couple of months in this area. A Louisiana court slapped down his voucher program as an illegal sluicing of public-education money into private pockets, and some of his vaunted "charter schools" were revealed to be trafficking in hilarious Christianist nonsense. Nevertheless, "Bobby" went into the liberal lion's den and hung tough.

"I think there is a moral imperative that it's not right that only wealthy parents get to decide where their kids go to school," Jindal told an audience at Washington's Brookings Institution.

See how easy it is? The controversy is not about private education "reformers" getting fat on the public dime, it's about a "moral imperative" and it's an issue of equality. "Bobby" Jindal is the last great civil-rights leader.

Jindal was invited as the keynote speaker for the debut of a Brookings report ranking a New Orleans district tops in the nation on school choice based on policies like expanded access to charter schools. But his current push to implement a far-reaching voucher program that offers parents public funding to attend private schools is going through a rough patch. This month a state district judge ruled that it violated the state constitution by using money earmarked for public schools, siding with teachers' unions who had sued to stop the policy from taking effect. The case goes to the state Supreme Court next, but if the Jindal administration's appeal fails they will need to find another route to finance the program, which could be a politically difficult affair...Speaking at Brookings, Jindal defended the legality of the vouchers, saying that the money was still being used to publicly educate students, just not through public schools. "To me it's pretty obvious that we don't fund bricks and mortar, we're funding students' education," he said.

Ed Kilgore nicely puts paid to this careerist nonsense, particularly on the issue of accountability, with which "reformers" like "Bobby" have a very serious problem. But I'm particularly fond of that "bricks and mortar" crack of which Jindal seems inordinately proud. In my other day job, in which I write about sports, one of the latest recruiting scams is to create "charter schools" that exist in your living room, or perhaps in someone's garage, and which function merely as SAT mills to get various power forwards eligible. (Even quasi-legitimate charter schools are in on the deal, too.) Now, this has improved the quality of college basketball, but it's also a perfect example of what Kilgore is talking about. And, also, too: maybe "Bobby" should concentrate just a little on "bricks and mortar" because some of his public schools are falling down.